


how to trust your partner in seven days

by skiaphilia



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:25:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skiaphilia/pseuds/skiaphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neku learns that the world might not end with him; Joshua assures him that it does. Ten snapshots of w2, beginning to end. (Semi-AU, spoilers up through endgame.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	how to trust your partner in seven days

1.

“Make a pact with me,” he says. Except he doesn’t really say it, just flashes the light in front of your eyes and  _bam_ , it’s like you’re chained together, partners in a crime that only he knows about.

Soon, you think, you’re about to be a part of a crime that only you know about, because that crime is going to be  _killing the shit out of him._

2.

It’s frustrating, how little he seems to care about the fact that death hangs over your heads. How he doesn’t seem to realise that you have more at stake than your own life. The guilt burns through you like ten suns dying, and he’s either blind, or he’s already turned away.

3.

You recall the ever-important “trust your partner” whenever he drags you into a shop; when he hands you a dress, Gothic Lolita Hell in a couple of lacy stitches, you blurt it out.

He tilts his head in that way of his and giggles, sliding some money to the shopkeeper. “So you  _do_  understand—this is going to send our attack stat through the roof, dear.”

4.

The Noise towers over you, stories upon stories of impossibility, of shadows and screaming and  _pain—_

—and he’s killed it in one blow. Almost nervous, he kneels by your side and watches, waits until you stop shaking and the colour returns to your cheeks before making some quip about not taking these things to heart. 

(You would never say so, but the way he lets you lean against him for a while—how you fall asleep, head on his shoulder and wow, he’s got one arm around you—it’s nice.)

5.

The dreams are starting to get to you. There’s the one where Math Nerd kills you and there’s the one where you’re staring down your favourite mural with gunshots ringing through your ears that jerks you awake far too early, but the worst?

The worst is the one where _he_  kills you, one bullet and the impeccable aim you’d expect, though you’re much too worried to ask him about it.

6. 

Warmth is a luxury, at this point, so when he suggests you stop in at the coffee shop you agree with a tad more vigour than usual—enough that he comments on it—“Why, if I’d known a cup of coffee was all you needed to open up, this would’ve been a lot easier.” You order tea, once you get there, to be difficult. 

…Somehow you still get coffee, though, partner and barista both muffling laughter behind their hands; you do not get the joke.

7.

Days late to the ‘trend’ (as is usual for you, really), you get the phone upgrade that lets you take pictures of the past.

You set it to five years previous and, regardless of the hand he throws in front of his face, snap the picture. 

What you were expecting was certainly not  _nothing_ _,_ static where he really should be—he takes it back for repairs and grumbles something about the failings of modern technology.

8.

Drunk off success, you kiss him, standing on the top floor with the whole city stretched before you; the sun has just risen over the tallest buildings, his hair spun gold in the light. This moment is perfect—beneath your fingers you can even feel him  _blush_ , and that might just be your greatest triumph of the day.

You stumble back in time for Math Nerd to use the last fraction of his strength on him—the flush never fades from his cheeks, but with the split second between his final words and his disappearance you wonder if this is one of those dreams where you’ve died, some new torture where the two of them team up to tear your soul to pieces.

9.

You hated him, you hated him, you  _hate_  him for leaving you, but to the rest of the world you might as well think he was a saint. 

(He was, in a way, being the only thing stopping you from—yet simultaneously guiding you towards—snapping entirely. 

Seven days with no anchor and you’re adrift, nothing to lean on, and the guilt still burns between you and your new partner, creating too many awkward silences to count.)

10.

Everything about him is curled up: fingers around the trigger, lips in a smile more sincere than all the other ones combined, hair turned to liquid silver in the light. He asks for you to draw, and it sounds like singing, the note in an octave that churns your stomach in equal parts fear and anxiety (because you are so, so enamoured with him, seven days’ separation smoothing over the holes in his story, in his personality, and leaving only love).

One bullet and the impeccable aim you’d expect kill you doubly, your last thoughts of your friends, your life—of him, how he’s staring down at you, how he drops the gun with trembling hands, and perhaps the chain that strings between you has dragged him down as well, in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> i should really post fic on here more ah... this is about a month old? i set myself three-sentence limits on each of the parts to see how much i could do with it; this came out. o/


End file.
